Whatever Happened to Coopersburg’s Stolen Dinosaur Tracks?
Longtime residents of the Lehigh Valley may remember the case of the stolen dinosaur tracks. Fossilized footprints that had survived nearly 200 million years were brazenly stolen from a hillside outside Coopersburg in the summer of 1989. According to a Morning Call story published at the time, three unidentified men used cement-cutting tools to chisel the beloved dino prints out of the surrounding rock, potentially to sell them to a private collector. The footprints were never seen again, and thousands of local schoolchildren who would have learned about dinosaurs by visiting them were robbed of that opportunity.
Fast forward to 2025, and the Coopersburg Historical Society is hosting a talk about the geological significance of the lost tracks. On Saturday, March 15 at 1 p.m., Lehigh University geology professor Frank J. Pazzaglia will explain why rocks that include dinosaur fossils are exposed in the Coopersburg area and talk about the type of dinosaur that once lived there. A brief history of the discovery of the tracks in 1978 and their theft 11 years later will be provided by the society before Pazzaglia’s presentation, which will be held at St. John’s UCC, 538 Thomas St., Coopersburg. The talk is free and open to the public.
